Trisha and Caro were huddled on the couch, though Trisha was throwing dubious glances towards the television.

‘I feel like they’re everywhere,’ she said when Michaela walked in. ‘Are you okay? What were you doing in there?’

Michaela leaned down and kissed her girlfriend. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘How’s Caro?’

Caro looked up and answered for herself. ‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘Though Trisha gave me a huge fright pulling me from bed like that.’

‘Trisha was incredibly brave, getting you out of there like that.’

‘Yeah, except she won’t tell me what was going on.’

Michaela looked down at the camera in her hand. ‘Maybe this will tell us.’

‘Fuck this,’ Trisha said and got up. She went to the kitchen and turned on the lights in there and over the table. Then she walked back into the living room and flicked the television on. She muted the sound and looked at Michaela and shrugged.

‘You said there was one in there before,’ she said in her own defence. ‘If it’s still there it doesn’t stand a chance against Jerry Springer.’

Michaela grinned and walked over to Trisha, enveloping her in a giant hug. They stood there a moment, wrapped around each other, then stepped back, Michaela still holding the camera.

‘You ready to watch this?’ she asked.

‘I am never going to be ready to watch that,’ Trisha answered.

‘Right there with you, hon. But we’re going to watch it anyway, aren’t we?’

Trisha gave a tired laugh. ‘You’re the ghost buster, babe.’ She looked around the room and Michaela read her mind.

‘You want to get out of here?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. Part of me thinks we should go get a room somewhere. How do people do this shit?’

Caro spoke up. ‘Will someone tell me what is going on?’ she asked. ‘The lights are all on, Trisha. I can’t see anything here, can you?’

Trisha looked at her little sister. ‘It ain’t the things I can see I’m worried about.’ But she looked over at Michaela.

‘I guess we’re all right here, as long as no one turns the lights off. I’m going to make coffee, you want some?’

Michaela nodded and walked over to her laptop still hooked up on the dining table. ‘Yes please. With a liberal dash of bourbon.’

‘And I’m right with you there.’

Caro came over to the table, pulling on the robe Michaela had brought out from her room.

‘What’s going on in my room?’ she whispered.

Michaela looked at her, surprised. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You turned off the light and closed the door. I thought you would have left the light on. There still a camera recording in there?’

Michaela nodded and after a moment Caro nodded too.

‘Tell me why Trisha dragged me out of bed, she said.

Michaela searched Caro’s face. She was pale but seemed otherwise composed. How would she react when she saw what was hopefully on the tape though? She’d had a shock earlier in the day already.

‘I can show you,’ Michaela said. ‘But are you sure you want to see? It’s, well, I mean, it’s in your room.’

‘I want to see. I’ll be okay.’

Michaela gave her one more searching look then nodded, satisfied. She would want to see too, if roles were reversed. She plugged in the USB cable and opened up the right program on the computer. Within moments an image of the room they were standing in showed up, glowing green, on the screen. In the bottom right-hand corner the time counted off in seconds.

Trisha came around the table and handed Michaela her coffee. Michaela took a sip and just about coughed.

‘Where’s the coffee in my bourbon?’ she asked.

‘Where’s mine?’ Caro complained.

‘Shut up the both of you; let’s see what the camera recorded.’

They stood in a row, watching the camera pan around the room in jerky movements. Her technique needed a bit of work, Michaela thought. The picture froze on Trisha sitting wide eyed on the couch then moved past, past the television then reversing until the television came into focus. On the screen, something showed, a shadow doing what should have been impossible, lurking, man-shaped inside the set.

They watched the tape straight through then set it back to the beginning and watched it again. Caro was chewing on her fingernails by the second time through.

‘What are they doing?’ she asked as on the screen the shadow man bent over her sleeping form. ‘What do they want?’

Michaela put an arm around the girl and squeezed. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But we’re going to find out.’

Caro was shaking her head. ‘They don’t want anything good, do they?’

‘We don’t know that.’

She pointed at the screen which was paused on the image of the bending shadow. ‘What’s it going to do? Suck my life force from me while I sleep? What the hell is it doing? What does it want from me?’

The picture on the computer was disturbing. Michaela stood and examined it in silence. She didn’t have the answers for Caro. It looked ominous. She turned to Trisha, standing silently on her other side.

‘What sort of feeling did you get from them?’ she asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Did they feel friendly and harmless to you?’

Trisha shook her head. ‘No. they felt dark and awful. And somehow relentless, you know?  Definitely threatening. That’s why I think we should get the fuck out of Dodge.’

Michaela hadn’t found them particularly pleasant either. Their aura was one of darkness all right, and a very dislocating sense of other-ness. They didn’t feel like human spirits. Or anything that had once been a human spirit. They were far more elemental than that.

‘Turn it off.’ Caro sat down at the table and rubbed her arms. ‘I don’t want to look at it anymore; I just want to know what we’re going to do next.’

Michaela did as she was asked and turned off the footage from the camera. She thought about the other one still in Caro’s room and wondered if it were recording anything. She would leave it a while longer. Instead she sipped at her coffee and thought about Caro’s question.

She looked at Trisha. ‘Tomorrow we go to this effigy mound, yeah?’

Trisha nodded. ‘And if we figure out what you did there, Caro, maybe we can figure out how to get rid of those fucking things.’